As tourists and office workers scurried around Sydney's Circular Quay, perched high above in an apartment whose majesty was matched only by its harbour views, a group of billionaires gathered with a clutch of the country's most senior bank executives and captains of Australia's $2 trillion superannuation industry.
The group of lunch invitees, hand-picked by Australia's richest man, Anthony Pratt, and hosted by him at his Sydney pad, was plotting - or at least spitballing about - a major change in the financial system.
It was a bold pitch aimed at reshaping a major aspect of how our superannuation funds invest - a move that would facilitate super funds growing their traditional model to become lenders to large and medium-sized business - thus allowing businesses to bypass, to some extent, the traditional bank lenders or equity markets to fund their expansion plans.
Such a radical departure from the status quo in superannuation might have been considered fanciful if not for the importance and influence of the 25 gathered in the room. And not a politician among them.
This was Pratt's brainchild, his service to the Australian business community.
And he has the pulling power to gather an influential crowd. From the father of our national superannuation system, former prime minister Paul Keating, to fellow billionaires Gina Rinehart and Lindsay Fox, to Treasury Secretary John Fraser and the heads of the ANZ and Macquarie banks.
It was the pinnacle of the business elite and all were there to opine on whether superannuation funds were a suitable vehicle to house corporate bonds issued by large and medium-sized Australian companies to borrow money.
Regardless of whether they privately thought it was achievable, they had their prepared, supportive words.
Around the silver cutlery and crystal glass-laden table, ornamented with clusters of white roses, each of those gathered were quizzed about whether such a significant change was possible, positive or needed.
As expected, Keating pulled no punches and was happy to ruffle the financial establishment, noting "institutional stodginess on behalf of super funds and backwardness on behalf of the banks" would be the only reason that such a revolutionary scheme wouldn't fly.
Not a peep from those around the table who were in his sights.
Keating clearly wants his superannuation child to mature and take on an expanded role of fostering growth in Australian business investment rather than just acting as a means to fund our retirement.
"We have never had a robust debt market in Australia. You can always give away a bit of your equity but you can't borrow long term," he lectured the assembled.
Fuelled with 2009 Grange Hermitage, grilled Rangers Valley fillet of beef, hand-rolled baguettes, fresh burratini with heirloom tomatoes, Genoa fig, basil and aged balsamic, they mulled ways to tackle the problem that Australian companies need access to long-term debt that banks won't provide.
While the very largest of Australian companies regularly tap into US corporate debt markets to get their hands on long-term funding, those operating in the next few levels down are generally locked out of offshore markets.
Indeed, Pratt has easily raised money for his Visy group through US corporate bonds and has been the first and only Australian company to also raise debt using the local super industry.
Fox seemed to be at least attempting to support Pratt. "Long-term lending is tremendously advantageous. 20-year financing would change the ball game completely. We would all be in a far stronger position," he said.
In what appeared to be a reference to the power of the big supermarkets, he said: "Currently the big companies will just get bigger and the small ones will go out of business."
But he admitted he hasn't tried to tap into the Australian superannuation market to fund his expansion because the banks have looked after him very nicely and he has not needed to change.
"I get more knockbacks at home than from bankers."
"Traditionally we are all creatures of habit. When you get home tonight, all you blokes, you try and get into your wife's side of the bed and see if it lasts the night because you've got one side, she's got the other side and there is no real reason for that. But try and change it and you can't because it's what you've done for a long period of time. It's difficult to do something that hasn't been done before."
Rinehart's contribution was light on detail but she noted that "it's becoming really hard for small and medium-sized corporates to get finance. We've got to get more cost competitive internationally".
As for the bankers around the room, there was little resistance to the idea that the giant super funds could become competition as providers of corporate debt.
Maybe that's because they think the whole idea won't fly or because they make more money facilitating a deal between a super fund and a borrower than they do in actually lending.
Or maybe they just have bigger concerns to deal with right now - a royal commission perhaps?
